If you are unfamiliar with the process by which search engines rank and order the listings that appear when someone searches for information, you need to understand a few basic concepts. The search engines all use a variety of different methods to analyze individual websites. Based upon their analysis, those engines then give each website a relatively arbitrary ranking. The higher a page's rank, the higher up in the listings that website will appear.
How exactly do these search engines create their rankings? Different factors come into play. If you are interested in making sure that your website ranks highly when people are searching for products you sell or services you offer, you need to know at least these basics about search engine optimization. The most basic of these factors has to do with the HTML code behind the website. The specific words that were inserted into the code have a specific effect on the ranking of your website in the eyes of the search engines.
If you paid someone to create your website, you probably have never really examined the code that, truly speaking, is what makes your website tick. Luckily, I'm here to provide you with some beginner tools you can use to, at the very least, sound intelligent when you speak with your web designer to make sure that everything is being done to optimize your website for the search engines.
First, open your web browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Firefox, etc.). Load your website by typing in its address. When your page loads, you'll want to look at the code behind the page. In the latest version of IE, you'll find the code by clicking on the Page button on the right hand side of the page and then scrolling down to "View Source." When you click on this menu item, another window will open that, to the uninitiated, will look like a bunch of gobbledygook. In Firefox, simply look under the View menu. Netscape has something similar. You're looking for the menu item that refers to "source" or "code."
Don't worry about all that code. We won't go into a lot of detail. And, thankfully, most of the code you'll be looking for is at the top of the webpage. Starting at the top, look for: meta Name="description" Content=" After the word content should be a sentence or two that accurately describes your business or your product. Below that description should be: meta Name="Keywords" Content= with a list of keywords separated by commas. These keywords need to be carefully chosen to represent terms people might use to search for your product or service.
One last thing to check and you'll have a very basic understanding of how a website can be optimized for a search engine. When you have your browser open, what is the title of that webpage? It should be something that contains a couple of keywords, again, terms people might use when searching for your product or service.
To sum up, three basic elements make up your first line of search engine optimization: strong meta Name description content, strong meta Name keywords, and well written page titles. Any good optimization will begin with these three steps.
Darren Barkett is the president of Creative eMarketing Solutions, a full service eMarketing provider for businesses of all sizes. His current clients include business such as a natural pharmaceutical company, a winery in Colorado, a self-help guru in western North Carolina, a face painter as well as others. Working with a diverse group of businesses allows him to have a grasp on what exactly creates a powerful eMarketing presence across the board.
After spending many years teaching middle school students how to read, write, and be relatively human, Darren now works to increase the scope of his influence by educating adults in the ways of internet marketing. By working with businesses, both big and small, to incorporate the power and potential of the internet and online communities, he enables business owners to focus their efforts on what they know and do best, producing and performing.
